


Point of Contact

by Thimblerig



Series: On the Decks of La Sirena [4]
Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Agnes's past as a security risk, Gen, Interviews & Interrogations, Raffi's past as an intelligence analyst, not an entirely happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22770316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: The thing is,the thing is,this milk-and-water, bland, helpful,nothing to see here but I’d like to be your friendpersona that Jurati has is exactly what Raffi used to teach her field agents. She is temperamentally and professionally inclined to distrust it. Or maybe Juratiisexactly what she appears to be - a lonely scholarly type. Or both...
Relationships: Dr Agnes Jurati & Raffi Musiker
Series: On the Decks of La Sirena [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634554
Comments: 12
Kudos: 51





	Point of Contact

Raffi finds the little doctor in Cris’s plant room, playing with a water-mister and the Spotted Botanicula. “Oh, hey now,” she giggles, as the Botanicula winds a skinny tendril around her finger and yanks. “I’m not food,” she tells it gently. After a moment of inaction the tendril releases and she squirts another leaf with the mister. The gold-flecked, purple leaf opens out leisurely under the mist, then another butts itself against her wrist, greedy for attention. It’s unspeakably cute. She looks up at Raffi’s tread and her smile freezes.

Raffi hasn’t exactly been welcoming to Jurati. It’s a fair reaction.

“We never went through that security check,” Raffi says. “Freecloud is close now and I’ve been remiss. My apologies.”

Jurati’s slight shoulders sag. “Ah, yes. You’ve been -” she doesn’t say _drunk,_ she doesn’t say _hungover,_ or, _sweating out the leaf and fretting over Freecloud._ “You’ve been busy.”

“Indeed.” Raffi smiles, calm and friendly as an angler fishing for trout. “The interview should only take half an hour, if you have the time.”

Jurati doesn’t smile back but she follows Raffi readily enough, to a little conference room set with a low table and two comfortable chairs, a carafe of water and cups, and by them the silver disk of a biometric monitor, small as a thumbnail. All very civil, very neutral, nothing to fuss about and Jurati doesn’t, sitting neatly in her chair and thumbing the padd with the permissions statement as Raffi rattles off from memory the boilerplate about recording and biometric monitoring. She unbuttons her cuff without being asked and pushes up her sleeve to let Raffi attach the silver disk to her inner forearm, just below the fragile tendons of the wrist.

Holographic screens light up around them, blood pressure, heart rate, blood cortisol… close-ups of the subject’s eyes and the space between her eyebrows where the micro-expressions dwell. Raffi flicks the displays to sit behind Jurati, where Raffi can see everything, and the little doctor does not comment. With a personnel file scrounged up via J-L’s old security clearance and a few irregular research techniques, Raffi begins.

“How long have you worked at the Daystrom Institute, Doctor Jurati…?”

The thing is, _the thing is,_ this milk-and-water, bland, helpful, _nothing to see here but I’d like to be your friend_ persona that Jurati has is exactly what Raffi used to teach her field agents. She is temperamentally and professionally inclined to distrust it. Or maybe Jurati _is_ exactly what she appears to be - a lonely scholarly type. Or both. And... Jurati’s interview manners aren’t entirely helpful, either, flawless as they are: she answers every question quickly and to the point, never flusters or stumbles when Raffi jumps up or down the timeline. She hides nothing, volunteers nothing. The stress markers are elevated, but not unduly so. The doctor sits there steady as an old prison lag.

If Raffi could only crack that little head open and read what she’s thinking… She pours herself a cup of water instead and sips from it meditatively.

“You’ve done this before,” she says to the doctor, watching her face.

Jurati’s eyes don’t move. “My field of research was prohibited after Utopia Planitia. Starfleet has interviewed me for security reasons once or twice a year since then.”

“A lot of practice.”

Jurati doesn’t answer.

“Did you go to Picard’s chateau directly after your point of contact with Commodore Oh? What time was it when you left… Did you pack a bag… How high was the sun when you talked… What exactly did you tell her…?”

They’re talking about the glasses the Commodore was wearing when the doctor stops mid sentence.

Quiet, professional, Raffi asks her, “Do you need a break, Doctor? There’s water.”

“You want to know,” Jurati says slowly, understanding dawning in her eyes, “if my talking to Starfleet Security caused the Romulans sent against Admiral Picard.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Raffi answers. “The attack might have been a follow-up to the Dahj girl’s visit. It might have been from an information leak somewhere down the chain. I’m trying to get a better picture of the situation. If Romulans have infiltrated Starfleet Security then -”

“Commodore Oh was not a Romulan.”

“What is your reasoning behind that judgement?” Raffi asks curiously. “Vulcans and Romulans are close enough related that disguise is very easy.”

“As far as I know, Romulans cannot perform mindmelds.”

Raffi’s eyebrows rise despite herself. “You consented to Commodore Oh mindmelding with you?”

“No.” Jurati sits there, colourless and bland, then adds, “They never ask.”

Raffi holds herself still. “Mindmelds are a Class 4 invasive procedure.” The little doctor doesn’t answer. “When have you undergone mindmelds before?”

“My field of research was prohibited after Utopia Planitia,” Jurati repeats. “I have been interviewed once or twice a year since then.”

“And you were mindmelded every time?”

“No.”

“Can you expand on that?”

“Sometimes it’s Betazoids. They just -” Jurati waves a hand by her ear - “listen extra hard. Sometimes the interro- the interviewer was non-psychic, like you.”

“There’s no record of this in your file.”

Jurati remains still, hands folded neatly in front of her again, one blue sleeve flapping loosely about her wrist. Behind her the stress markers are dancing butter-yellow. Raffi wants to punch something. She wants to scream at J-L. She wants to… _this_ is Starfleet now? This casual, off-the-books invasion of minds?

And yet… accusations of malfeasance, distracting and unverifiable, are also a tactic in a field agent’s handbook. Jurati’s stress is clear, in her biometrics if not her face, but that could just be the tension of brazening out a lie.

Raffi drinks more water, cool down her throat.

“And how do you feel about that?” she asks.

“About what?”

“Being mindmelded without your consent?”

“I understand that it has been a difficult time for synth research,” Jurati says neutrally, her faded blue eyes vague and her hands still in their clasp. “I am grateful I still have my department.” She blinks. “Had.” Behind her the display blooms red: fire red, poppy red, blood red. Anger, long held and buried deep. _There you are,_ thinks Raffi. _Found you._

She takes the conversation down to more bland topics to let them both breathe a little. And then she goes back and forth over Commodore Oh and collects all that Agnes can remember from her past brushes with Starfleet Security: the names, the dates, what was done. It’s not data that Raffi expected to get but she’ll take it all the same. Some of those interrogators were people she used to know.

It’s hours before they’re done. The little doctor picks the silver biometrics disk off her forearm and turns it over with small, pale fingers. They are cold on Raffi’s skin as Agnes takes her hand and turns it palm up, pushing up her sleeve, but the disk is warm where it touches Raffi’s inner wrist.

The markers in the display shoot into the red zones and Raffi’s eyes stare back at her, enormous, shadowed, and very, very tired. The little doctor turns and looks at the display without comment for two breaths. When she turns back she squeezes Raffi’s hand with her icy fingers before picking off the biometrics disk and setting it onto the table with a click.

“Whatever you’re looking for at Freecloud,” she says, rising, “I hope it goes well for you.”

“Doc!” Raffi calls to her when she is at the door. “Do you like poker?”

Agnes pauses. “I know the game.”

“This evening, in Cris’s quarters. If you’d like to join in, that is.”

Agnes turns. Her uncertain mouth works into a smile. She nods, briefly.

“I’ll be there.”

**Author's Note:**

> // I based much of this on a two-second clip in one of the trailers of Agnes Jurati being mindmelded. Going by the lighting I’d guess that it was Commodore Oh, in Okinawa. That said, the show might well develop their conversation in a different way so this whole fic may be jossed in a week or so.
> 
> // The Spotted Botanicula came from the depths of my imagination. I feel bad about not consulting the wiki - there's probably something delightul in there - but this is what first came to mind.
> 
> // _Raffi holds herself still. “Mindmelds are a Class 4 procedure.”_ \- In TOS Spock only did mindmelds at great need. (I don’t know _Enterprise_ well enough to talk about T’Pol.) I’m assuming that in a reputable, likes-to-think-well-of-itself Starfleet, mindmelds are surrounded by (offscreen) paperwork and recorded justifications, in the manner of getting a warrant to search a suspect’s house.Times change.


End file.
